The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and eventually confront tentacled horrors reminiscent of Cthulhu. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake‑gun.
"One of our team member’s kids suggested a snake‑gun," Dietsch recalls. "We had a rapid‑scaling weapon tool, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes.
It blew his mind, and it stayed in the final game." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we knew from indie film that a lean crew can punch far above its weight." After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials," Dietsch explains. Though he had no formal training, he built a few tiny prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept quickly attracted further interest.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After buying a remote Canadian island restaurant and planning a quiet retirement, a call from his old Hollywood‑hillroommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development. Impressed by the demo, Wendschuh introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic, who then recruited Ubisoft veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer.
Funding proved challenging in a market downturn. The team began pitching in summer 2023, initially without representation. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles, they relaunched their pitch deck in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of industry veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high‑profile backers, the studio remains tiny—13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a specific, tightly knit group." To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the team invested heavily in internal tools early on.
"Any system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch says. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the toolset that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment financed the entire development; we only added a small project‑finance line for marketing," Wendschuh notes.
Because the investors’ returns are tied to the studio’s enterprise value, they encourage the team to continue building reusable tools, even if it slows immediate progress. When asked about generative AI, both Dietsch and Wendschuh are clear: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential," Dietsch says. "We might use AI for calendar management or email drafting, but never for art, design, or writing." Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, actually required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
Wendschuh adds, "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent." Dietsch finds the immediacy of game development liberating compared to film. In cinema, a concept can take years to reach the set, requiring approvals and star power. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a few hours and instantly visualized in the engine.
Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a handful of marquee names, whereas game development faces fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. "When I was six, I wanted to make games or movies; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch reflects.
"Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re creating an experience and a narrative, and that creative impulse remains the same."